Elizabeth Imlay
She Put Her Letters in the Wrong Envelopes
A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller 1932-1953
By Günther Stuhlmann (ed)
Allison & Busby 422pp £14.95 order from our bookshop
‘I’m singing! And not secretly but aloud,’ wrote Anaïs in 1931 (pace all feminists, I cannot possibly call her ‘Nin’; it suggests someone between a nun and a ninny and she was neither of those). ‘I’ve met Henry Miller. I saw a man I like…a man whom life makes drunk.’
If any book ever cried out for illustrations, it is this one. How did the inebriate Henry look at that time? What particular loveliness in his wife June infatuated both him and Anaïs? How did delicate Anaïs captivate the other two? While reading, I was desperate for views of Anaïs’s house at Louveciennes, of Paris in the Thirties, of the clothes, the cars, even the· smallest snapshot of Montmartre or Montparnasse where Henry pursued the artist’s life.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
While you're waiting for the March issue of Literary Review to pop through your letterbox, have another read of February's cover piece: Richard Davenport-Hines on the stormy letters Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick wrote to one another.
http://ow.ly/iHKh50ywe1x
What's the worth of being zen when the icecaps are melting and populism looms? The world's leading thinkers including @ronpurser will assess the 'mindfulness' craze at the world's largest philosophy and music festival, @HTLGIFestival, this May. Learn more: http://ow.ly/STu650ywARQ
'Feminists have been caricatured so often that it’s worth recalling the many obstacles placed in the path of women campaigning for equal rights.'
@polblonde on @helenlewis's new book about difficult women throughout history.
http://ow.ly/Is9c50ywe7G